Monday, October 31, 2005

The Silence of the Polls

As the handful of votes straggled in for the Picked Flicks Poll for #91-100, I inititally suspected nefarious intervention, tossing out all votes that didn't support The Passion of the Christ as a write-in candidate. But then it turned out, no, the vote format t'aint working with so many movies in the mix that not everyone had seen. So I'm going to drop this little mechanism until the countdown is good and done, at which point y'all can tell me about your favorites from the whole list, and what you woulda liked to see up there that wasn't.

Of course, the saddest reason to stop culling votes is that one particularly industrious readerseriously, not me!went to all this unsolicited trouble:

AK, you're a hero among men, not to mention among former students! But I'm not going to short-change any of the responses that did flow in, mostly orbiting around two expected targets, but not at first:

Vote 1 is for Cemetery Man, because, in the reader's words, I have watched it more than five times, and parts of it still mystify me. And because the romance between Gnaghi and Valentina's head is so sweet. And because Rupert Everett's performance sums up everything there is to say about 1990s ennui. (And then there's Rupert in that flowing white shirt...)

Vote 2 is for The Breakfast Club, because it shows all of the teen angst and frustration that most of us (I'd gather about 99.9% of us) felt at some point (or most of the time) during our high school years. The use of stereotypes is fabulous, and as the layers of these stereotypes peel away throughout the movie, we figure out that the 5 of them are pretty much the same.

Vote 3, loopily, is for I ♥ Huckabees, because 'Huckabees' could be the key to the entire existence of movies #99, #100, the only other ones I've seen and considered voting. Everything is connected. #92 and #94, I really want to see --the cinema is so infinite. It most definitely is.

Vote 4 is also for I ♥ Huckabees, this time because I heart it tooparticularly because of the music. Jon Brion’s score is as playful, irreverent and haunting as his scores in 'Eternal Sunshine' and 'Punch Drunk Love.' It has a comically overly styled feel to it, but it is every bit as complicated, beautiful and absurd as the story. Plus, my sister Leah played on the movie soundtrack. That helps win it a place on my list.

So we almost had a winner, but then Vote 5 came in for The Breakfast Club, because it spoke to and defined an entire generation... For better or for worse.

1 Comments:

I just saw The Unknown with Lon Chaney. Chalk up another great movie reference in Cemetery Man: the whole sequence where Francesco falls for the second She and attempts to get his... erm, member lopped off to please her.

Reading the Bromance: Homosocial Relationships in Film and Television ($32/pbk). Ed. Michael DeAngelis. Wayne State University Press, 2014.
Academic pieces that dig into recent portraits in popular media, comic and dramatic, of intimacies between straight(ish) men. Includes the essay
"'I Love You, Hombre': Y tu mamá también as Border-Crossing Bromance" by Nick Davis, as well as chapters on Superbad, Humpday, Jackass, The Wire, and other texts. Written for a mixed audience of scholars, students, and non-campus readers. Forthcoming in June 2014. "Remarkably sophisticated essays." Janet Staiger, "Essential reading for anyone interested in contemporary models of gender and sexuality." Harry Benshoff

Fifty Key American Films ($31/pbk). Ed. Sabine Haenni, John White. Routledge, 2009. Includes my essays on
The Wild Party,
The Incredibles, and
Brokeback Mountain. Intended as both a newcomer's guide to the terrain
and a series of short, exploratory essays about such influential works as The Birth of a Nation, His Girl Friday, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song,
Taxi Driver, Blade Runner, Daughters of the Dust, and Se7en.

The Cinema of Todd Haynes: All That Heaven
Allows ($25/pbk). Ed. James Morrison. Wallflower Press, via Columbia University Press, 2007. Includes the essay
"'The Invention of a People': Velvet Goldmine and the Unburying of Queer Desire" by Nick Davis, later expanded and revised in The Desiring-Image.
More, too, on Poison, Safe, Far From Heaven, and Haynes's other films by Alexandra Juhasz, Marcia Landy,
Todd McGowan, James Morrison, Anat Pick, and other scholars. "A collection as intellectually and emotionally
generous as Haynes' films" Patricia White, Swarthmore College

Film Studies:
The Basics ($23/pbk). By Amy Villarejo. Routledge, 2006, 2013. Award-winning
film scholar and teacher Amy Villarejo finally gives us the quick, smart, reader-friendly guide to film vocabulary that every
teacher, student, and movie enthusiast has been waiting for, as well as a one-stop primer in the past, present, and future of film production, exhibition,
circulation, and theory. Great glossary, wide-ranging examples, and utterly unpretentious prose that remains rigorous in its analysis;
the book commits itself at every turn to the artistry, politics, and accessibility of cinema.

Most recent screenings in each race;
multiple nominees appear wherever they scored their most prestigious nod...
and yes, that means Actress trumps Actor!

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